TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The mediator in Honduras’ political crisis said he will propose a national reconciliation government during the next round of talks, while ousted President Manuel Zelaya prepared a second bid to return home to reclaim power.
Negotiations to end the standoff over a June 28 military-backed coup have increasingly come under fire, with Zelaya’s supporters saying they will declare them failed if he is not reinstated during Saturday’s talks and Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez criticizing them as a U.S.-backed trap.
Zelaya’s foreign minister, Patricia Rodas, said late Thursday that the exiled president was en route to Honduras to set up an alternative seat of government somewhere in the country from which to wage a “final battle” against coup leaders. Interim President Roberto Micheletti has vowed to arrest Zelaya if he returns.
With fears of conflict rising, the chief mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, acknowledged the urgency of getting a deal quickly, saying that “we must remember that time is gold.”
“I am going to propose various ideas (at the talks); for example installing a government of national reconciliation, a coalition of key ministers such as of finance, security, the interior or government. I’ll see if we can talk of amnesties and for whom,” Arias said in an interview with the radio program Nuestra Voz.
Arias, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for helping end Central America’s civil wars, said a proposal to advance Honduras’ elections from the scheduled November date was not considered necessary.
Delegations representing Zelaya and Micheletti are expected to join the second round of talks Saturday in Costa Rica under Arias’ guidance, but hopes for a resolution appear slim.
When he was last seen in public, Zelaya vowed to return if Saturday’s talks don’t immediately result in his reinstatement and he said Hondurans have a constitutional right to launch an insurrection against an illegitimate government.
Rodas reinforced that, saying Zelaya’s delegation has nothing to negotiate. It will simply demand that the “illegal regime surrender peacefully,” and if it doesn’t, Zelaya’s side will declare the mediation to have failed, she said.
Micheletti, the former congressional leader who was sworn in to serve out the final months of Zelaya’s term, offered Wednesday to step down if there were guarantees that Zelaya would not return to power.
Arias rejected that proposal, saying the reinstatement of Zelaya was necessary.
But Micheletti on Thursday repeated his refusal to consider Zelaya regaining the presidency.
“If he comes and presents himself to authorities, he is welcome in our country. But if he comes with the intention of starting a revolutionary movement then he will find a people disposed to do anything,” Micheletti said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged “a peaceful, negotiated resolution” and said all involved should “refrain from actions that could result in violence.”
The State Department has tried to avoid a public role in the negotiations, saying Arias is directing the effort. But some Latin American leftist leaders are increasingly bashing the U.S. role in encouraging the negotiations.
In an essay published late Thursday, Fidel Castro dismissed the Costa Rica talks as having allowed Honduras’ de facto leaders to become more entrenched.
“The Costa Rica peace plan was suggested by the office of the State Department to contribute to the consolidation of the military coup,” the former Cuban president wrote.
“The coup plotters were in a hurry. The Costa Rican initiative had the objective of saving them,” the essay said.
Last week, Chavez, Venezuela’s socialist leader, called the talks a “trap” for Zelaya and criticized Arias for offering the same treatment to Zelaya as Micheletti.
Zelaya’s supporters said Thursday that he was en route to Honduras, though they didn’t say how or when he planned to enter the country. His whereabouts were unclear.
“Our president will be in Honduras at some point and some moment. He is already on his way. God protect him and the people of the Americas who are with him,” Rodas told reporters in La Paz, Bolivia, where she joined a meeting of leftist presidents.
“The establishment and installation of an alternative seat of government will be to direct what I will call the final battle” against leaders of the coup that toppled Zelaya, she said.
If Zelaya does try to re-enter Honduras, it would be his second attempt since masked soldiers shot up his house and flew him to Costa Rica in his pajamas early on June 28. His first attempt was thwarted July 5 when military vehicles on the runway blocked his Venezuelan plane from landing in Tegucigalpa.
Zelaya supporters blocked a road leading out of the capital Thursday to demand his return to power.
Thousands have staged such protests almost daily since Zelaya’s ouster, while crowds of roughly equal size have demonstrated in favor of Micheletti’s government.
The Supreme Court had issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya before the coup, ruling his effort to hold a referendum on whether to form a constitutional assembly was illegal. The military decided to send him into exile instead — a move that military lawyers have since acknowledged violated the constitution.
Many Hondurans viewed the proposed vote as an attempt by Zelaya to push for a socialist transformation in the model of his ally, Chavez.
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